THE MARINE STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL: Exploring The Potential of a Private Environmental Governance

This thesis is concerned with private environmental governance at a global level. It triesto grasp and analyse the phenomenon of the ‘Marine Stewardship Council’ (MSC) froman International Relations perspective. In this understanding, the MSC provides an innovativeprivate environmental governance mechanism whose role and functions need to bescrutinised. The underlying global governance debate suggests that new forms of problem-solving structures and processes are currently emerging, with a growth in regulatoryinitiative and control by private actors. However, there is rather little evidence to whichdegree the engagement of these actors in rule making and implementation on a globallevel challenges and complements established governance systems that have become ineffective.Accordingly, this thesis aims to generate a deeper understanding for the problemsand opportunities of the Marine Stewardship Council in this context. For clarificationit poses the question ‘what is the potential of the MSC to exert environmental governancein the issue area of fishing?’ Four criteria for governance potential are developed:(1) appropriateness of rules, (2) legitimacy of the governance mechanism, (3) behaviouralchanges of stakeholders triggered through the governance mechanism, and (4)the ability of raising concern. The analysis reveals that while the MSC’s potential to exertenvironmental governance in the issue area of fishing remains limited at present, it islikely that it increases in the near future. With regards to the global governance debate,however, this thesis generates evidence that private governance initiatives will only beable to complement public governance systems in a restricted manner.